Feedback. For musicians, the word itself is close to onomatopoeia. You can almost hear the screech interrupting their artistry.
For many in the workplace, it’s just as harsh.
Executed properly, feedback improves performance, develops talent, aligns expectations, solves problems, guides promotion and pay, and boosts the bottom line.
But it’s equally obvious that in many organizations, feedback doesn’t work, say Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone, authors of “Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well” (Viking/Penguin, 2014).
The authors cite research that only 36 percent of managers complete appraisals thoroughly and on time. In a recent survey, 55 percent of employees said their most recent performance review had been unfair or inaccurate, and one in four said they dread such evaluations more than anything else in their working lives.
When senior HR executives were asked about their biggest performance management challenge, 63 percent cited managers’ inability or unwillingness to have difficult feedback discussions.
Pushed and pulled
Many companies train leaders to provide more effective feedback. But the authors warn that improving the skills of the feedback giver won’t accomplish much if the receiver isn’t able to absorb what is said.
“It is the receiver who controls whether feedback is let in or kept out, who has to make sense of what he or she is hearing, and who decides whether or not to change. People need to stop treating feedback only as something that must be pushed and instead improve their ability to pull,” Heen and Stone state in an article for Harvard Business Review (hbr.org).
Receiving feedback, they surmise, is where the training needs to occur.
“For the past 20 years we’ve coached executives on difficult conversations, and we’ve found that almost everyone, from new hires to C-suite veterans, struggles with receiving feedback. A critical performance review, a well-intended suggestion, or an oblique comment that may or may not even be feedback
(“Well, your presentation was certainly interesting”) can spark an emotional reaction, inject tension into the relationship, and bring communication
to a halt. But there’s good news, too:
The skills needed to receive feedback well are distinct and learnable. They include being able to identify and manage the emotions triggered by the feedback and extract value from criticism even when it’s poorly delivered.”
Heen and Stone say receiving feedback is difficult because it “strikes at the tension between two core human needs — the need to learn and grow, and the need to be accepted just the way you are.” Getting better at receiving feedback
starts with understanding and managing those feelings.
“Criticism is never easy to take. Even when you know that it’s essential to your development and you trust that the person delivering it wants you to succeed, it can activate psychological triggers.
You might feel misjudged, ill-used, and sometimes threatened to your very core,” they state.
Growth depends on the employee’s ability to pull value from criticism and
on the willingness to seek out even more advice and coaching from bosses, peers and subordinates. Employees who are determined to learn from whatever feedback they get cannot be stopped.
